


Percy Priest breaks open wide

by wildechilde17



Series: The business trilogy [21]
Category: Black Widow (Comics), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 00:21:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14759090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildechilde17/pseuds/wildechilde17





	Percy Priest breaks open wide

“You haven’t asked about Wanda.”  She is standing in front of him. He rolls his head back to the midline before he opens his eyes. 

“I don’t have to.”

“You know.”

“I know and if I didn’t know, you not telling me was a pretty big pile of ash, Natasha.”

He has always been one to find a small place, with defensible sight lines to curl up into.  He finds these places as soon as he isn’t needed to be standing. She has the lights back on but needs to hack and fry to get through the next lot of doors.  He is sitting on his knapsack and isn’t helping. “How did you know?”

“Pietro,” he answers with the kind of lightness and tiredness that makes it sound like nothing he says is of importance.  “You kept me outta the fight, badly, but ya tried,” he smiles at his own aside but it still isn’t his familiar smile. “Wanda did the same for ol’ Quicksilver.  ‘m pretty sure Ross and the rest of the accord hawks thought he was dead, right? Even Stark kept mum?”

She nods silently.

“Good to know he could shut up about something,” he answers her nod with no real maliciousness. Clint does not hate Tony Stark any more than he hates Pietro Maximoff or Nick Fury. Clint Barton isn’t one to let you off the hook if there are foibles and flaws he could be prodding with sarcasm and mocking. Even now. “He wasn’t ready for a fight then anyway. So then everyone goes on the run.  ‘Cept me and Lang, of course.” He starts picking at the sole of his boot. “And Miss Thing took a page outta your book and told her brother to stay down lest he get all bullet holey again.”

It occurs to her that they had just assumed Pietro was snapped along with his sister.  They hadn’t even thought to ask the question. In the mess, she had let details slip, “Is he?”

“I never bought into the twin thing, I felt his pain, bullshit. Maybe it was just the scepter tying them together.” He closes his eyes again. “Maybe. I reckon it was like gangrene but like in the soul, in the heart of him.  A whole part of him just up and died.” His eyes still closed, he grimaces at the distasteful memory. “He knew it. Knew she was gone and I knew to believe him. Whole part of him dead and he had to still carry it around. Enough to drive you insane. He was up an’ gone after that.  Haven’t seen him since.”

“We will get her back.”

He opens his eyes again but they look flat and empty and stare right through her.  “I spent a lot of time thinkin’ losing you should feel like that. That I should know like that. I didn’t know like that.”

“Clint.”

“You knew,” he says with a shake of his head.

“Clint.”

“Enough to drive you insane.” His knuckles on his left-hand show signs of being bloodied in the last week, cross hatched with scabbing. 

“I hoped,” she says and sits beside him on the floor. It takes too long, she inches herself closer until her shoulder and thigh press against his.

“What?”

“I hoped.  It was hope that kept me looking for your pattern.” He stares at her. She wets her bottom lip. “You are not mine because of some mystical force or a pattern of genetics.  You are mine by choice.”

“I thought I should have died when you died.”

He doesn’t touch her, hasn’t touched her since he pulled his hand from inside her and smeared her over the pocket of his jeans.

“You made a choice, instead, to protect those you could.”

“It’s what you would have done,” he whispers hoarsely.

She frowns. Has he truly gone insane?  Does he think he has made it here beneath the Percy Priest following her shadow? “I am not dead, Clint Barton.”

“You sure?” he squints. He forces his hand through the hair on top of his head. 

She sets her jaw and flicks his right earlobe, hard.  “Hell has more ballet. I am not dead.”

He grabs for his ear and then his face breaks open with a truly Clint Barton smile. 

He kisses her, dragging her forward to his lips, his hands muffling the sound haphazardly cupped over her ears.  He kisses her messily as though there is no time for the art of it. She knows his lips even when they are broken open and taste of the iron in his blood. She knows the space in his mouth he seeks to fill with her tongue and the known and yet foreign mingle of scent and taste that is him this close to her.

Natasha lets herself believe that he is Clint Barton again. She will let herself do this for as long as he kisses her.

“I shoulda found you,” he says finally, resting his forehead against hers.

“No,” she answers, pushing him back so that she can resume her attack on the abandoned base. “You told me to come find you.”

She catches on the moment he stands up behind her. That he is willing to help now has surprised her.

“You’re good at that,” Clint Barton says. 


End file.
